Nov 09 Dennis Jones – Base Form

The original version of this article was written in 2004…

After twenty five years on the doors and some two thousand street fights, many (when he’s been forced to defend himself) finished with a one strike knockout from Dennis’s lethal hands, you cannot argue as to whether what Dennis does works or not.  He is not a huge muscle bound ‘doorman’ but a normally built, quiet, thoughtful, polite, strategist and technician.  Because he doesn’t rely on size or strength, because his techniques have worked on many mature fighters in the south east area, his reputation is respected by those that count and not just the baseball capped ‘coke heads’ that frequent our streets and nightclubs in the dark hours.

 As someone who has spent most of his adult life teaching and working in the security industry, I feel that Dennis’s skills and reputation are worthy of close scrutiny.  We know from his column that he was one of the leading Kyokushinkai karate instructors in the Medway area in the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s deserting the ranks when he discovered as doorman that what he had been taught didn’t work for him on the streets.

This put him on to a life long quest to discover the ‘truth’ of what does and doesn’t work in the Martial Arts and what adaptation is necessary to perfect his technique and strategy.  Dennis hit the martial arts trail and searched everywhere; he scoured the clubs and studied instructors, testing the techniques and systems for real.  He studied boxers and named street fighters discovering that what really worked fell naturally into the spectrum of traditional martial arts and the techniques that had been discarded by many as ‘impractical’ because it didn’t fit into their sport techniques and strategies.

Dennis is also a prolific reader, using the classics, carefully studying the words and philosophies of the masters who also had to use their skills to protect their lives in battle.  He became an enigma to most martial artists.  As they became more sport oriented in the ‘80’s Dennis was repeatedly knocking people out on the doors with techniques from their art that they wouldn’t even recognise as they practised their sport backfist, round kick and reverse punch.

Then came the renaissance, the bunkai and ohyo explorers, those that started to look for the lost roots of their arts, convinced that the ability to defend themselves on the streets lay dormant in the ritual forms that they had only practised for their gradings.

By this time Dennis was studying tai chi, finding that many of his personal discoveries were being confirmed and lay deep within in this mysterious art.

When I met Dennis I could recognise what he was doing, treading two quite different paths, we had made much the same discoveries.  Dennis had ‘kigurai’ the bearing and demeanour of a senior martial artist, he was polite and respectful but carried an aura of power.  His movements were light and gentle, but rooted and carried natural energy.  When he unleashed the famed ‘knockout’ strikes you could see the perfect alignment, power sourcing and targeting of a classically taught martial artist.

As you can see from his movements, Dennis’s ability to unbalance a 20 stone man with the lightest of touches, keep him unbalanced, and then control, or if necessary, knock him out are very carefully practised to the point that the offender remains unaware that he is being controlled by careful use of alignment and balance.

There is nothing that Dennis does that I can’t relate to from a traditional martial arts point of view and I feel that he is the ideal example of how to integrate traditional martial arts training into the street.

The genius of his ‘Base Form’ is that it is just that using skills that Dennis has used literally thousands of times for real.  The angled steps and pivots are classical tai sabaki (body skills) skills used in all martial arts.

The strikes, controls and pushes can be found generally in karate kata, kung fu forms, ju jitsu and aikido.

He uses controlling techniques in the first set of applications and would only use the striking elbow to finish if he has to and utilises a more deadly striking and gouging approach in the second set.

Training with Dennis reinforces the basic martial art skills of a dojo as opposed to the “everything we have been doing for twenty years is wrong” approach of some others.  The Base Form is an excellent ‘bolt on’ form to any martial arts system with direct application to every move that Dennis has used successfully time and time again.

We look back at the old masters who used their martial arts for real to see how to apply technique and now we have a rare opportunity to work with someone who has used his martial arts in a practical way, night after night for over 25 years and therefore only uses applications that have been thoroughly worked and tested, this way an instructor KNOWS that what he is teaching works – and in the modern world!

Steve Rowe

Steve Rowe is a highly successful Martial Arts instructor - an International Neigong, Qigong and Tai Chi Teacher and an 8th Dan Karate with many other senior dan grades in other martial disciplines.

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